Review of V/H/S/2 (2013) by Reed M — 04 Jul 2013

I am a huge fan of the original, but this sequel did nothing more than spit on the grave of its predecessor.

The original had believable placement of it's characters. They may have been horrible people, but I had an understanding of who they were. VHS2, however, puts forth no effort to add any depth to its characters and leaves you with a shallow cast of uninteresting, unbelievable protagonists. In my opinion, VHS succeeded because its characters were not good people. VHS2 goes the completely opposite way by having every man/woman/child be victimized and innocent, which killed the vibe of this movie for me at the beginning.

Of course, the real 'meat' of this movie is the short clips within it, and boy, do they suck for the most part. Every single one contains some for of a zombie, without ruining too much. It makes the future clips seem too predictable. They even make fairly obvious hints in the last clip as to what the monster will be which felt like a big slap in the face. The Safe Haven story stood apart from the rest though. Dealing with a cult and the psychosis of its members and leader, I actually found myself quite drawn in and interested. This was, of course, before it fizzled out at the end, which seems to be par for the course for the VHS movies. They'e always seem to deteriorate as they go along aside from the Betrayal and Haunted House clips from the original (fantasic sceens by the way).

This movie may not have lacked originality (even though it contained the far over done zombie), but it killed itself with it's bland writing, bland characters, bland enemies, and bland taste that you're left with afterwords. Whatever tension that is created is immeadiately relieved as if by fear that the audience cannot handle it. This movie fails, and only gets an extra star for the Safe Haven story, aka the diamond buried deep beneath the rough.